


Because I was with you

by ToxicPineapple



Series: Rantaro Amami Week 2020 [5]
Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, Coughing, Domestic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-New Dangan Ronpa V3, virtual reality au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26727577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToxicPineapple/pseuds/ToxicPineapple
Summary: Rantaro has never asked Kaito what his nightmares are about, mostly because he hasn’t needed to. Back in the beginning, when Kaito’s breakdowns were always littered with apologies and half-formed, incoherent protestations about how he was supposed to be stronger, supposed to be the hero, whatever that meant, and back when Rantaro had so much trauma layered upon trauma layered upon trauma that he had simply forgotten how to cry, that being vulnerable was even an option, he always told Rantaro about his nightmares from start to finish, like he had something to prove. Like if he could put it out into the world what they were about, it meant he wasn’t weak, or… or something.And it wasn’t as though Rantaro had minded-- he’d heard more than his fair share of nightmares in the few months between his first and second game, trying so hard to fix things for his friends from DRV2 like he hadn’t been able to the first time around-- but it always sucked, seeing Kaito tear himself apart, trying to get through an explanation he clearly didn’t want to give.---Rantaro comforts Kaito after a nightmare.---Amami week day five: Safe/Danger
Relationships: Amami Rantaro/Momota Kaito
Series: Rantaro Amami Week 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941298
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	Because I was with you

**Author's Note:**

> written for amami week day five! the prompt was safe/danger
> 
> i didn't publicise amami week this year because it's a personal writing project i'm doing with a few other friends. here are the prompts for the week, but it is kind of a friend event, just for the record. i'm aware that i'm doing this at the exact same time as amamatsu week and i really wish i had known before i already had two fics finished so i could try and put it at another time FKJDSFKLj but yeah, please support amamatsu week and don't do this challenge with me unless you're one of my friends who was already doing it. <3
> 
> day one: stay/go  
> day two: lost/fault  
> day three: home/ocean  
> day four: trust/family  
> day five: safe/danger  
> day six: gold/green  
> day seven: free space/birthday

Rantaro already isn’t asleep-- because it’s always been so hard falling asleep, even now, almost two and a half years since the killing games were ended for good-- but the sound of coughing, harsh and guttural from across the room, where Kaito is (was) sleeping in their bed, brings Rantaro well and truly out of any half-asleep dozes he might’ve fallen into previously.

He picks himself up from the floor, feeling his heart do a little hop and skip in his chest (which is really too mild a figure of speech to use to describe the flip his heart really does, but Rantaro has always been so afraid of hyperbole) as he looks over to where his boyfriend is lying, tangled in sheets. Rantaro kicks his book to the side and makes his way swiftly over to the bed, stopping himself from reaching out to Kaito immediately, opting instead to pour him a cap full of water from the thermos on the nightstand.

Cough syrup will probably sooth his throat better, but their only bottle is in the bathroom, and that’s too far to go when Kaito is actively trying to hack up a lung. Besides, Kaito doesn’t  _ like  _ cough medicine-- never has, even before the simulation, or so he’s told Rantaro-- and water is better for the other parts of this, like getting Kaito to come out of the memories that are no doubt flashing before his eyes right now, even as he curls in on himself, clearly conscious, the nightmare ended. But not forgotten. Never forgotten. That would be too easy, too good, no matter how much Kaito deserves it.

...Waxing philosophical about all the things that Kaito  _ deserves  _ and doesn’t  _ get  _ has never helped him out of a panic attack though, so Rantaro crams the thought into the back of his mind, to resurface later when the situation is less urgent, and puts the cap down for the moment, climbing up in the bed and reaching out with steady, placating hands, seeking to ease the tension from Kaito’s shoulders, rub circles in his back while he coughs it out. Kaito responds to his touch (likely because they’ve done this song and dance countless times before, in the years since leaving the facility) as though he’s been awake all this time, leaning back into it, eyelashes fluttering, tears brimming in his eyes.

Rantaro’s heart does a pathetic little squeeze, and his entire chest tightens when Kaito acknowledges him properly, a shredded little hum in the back of his throat all he can really afford before he launches into another ugly bout of coughing. These fits of his always sound so ugly, so painful, and Rantaro is  _ used  _ to it by now (as horrible as that is to say), but that doesn’t make it any less terrible to witness, least of all because Rantaro can’t really  _ do  _ anything about it. He can sit here as he is now, rubbing Kaito’s back, humming a lullaby under his breath, murmuring the occasional platitude, and Kaito has said it’s helpful, but it’s not… it doesn’t  _ fix  _ anything. Kaito still has to… go through all of this.

There have been plenty of times when Rantaro has felt helpless over the past two and a half years, and before that, when they were back in the killing game, and before  _ that,  _ when he was searching the world for sisters he would never find (not that he ever had any sisters in the first place, all of those just being memories put into his head by  _ Team Danganronpa,  _ but that’s neither here nor there, and hardly relevant in their current situation) but it’s never gotten any easier, to watch something horrible happen, someone he loves suffer, and just… not be able to do anything  _ but  _ watch.

(Sometimes, on the nights when Rantaro does manage to get to sleep, he thinks of Miyake, and Kikuchi, and Sako, thinks of how paralysed he felt, watching them executed. And god, they’re still alive, he still sees them for lunch every couple of weeks, still knows all their birthdays and favourite kinds of chocolate, but sometimes when he looks into their eyes all he can see is the way Sako smiled before the bombs went off, and the frantic, apologetic way Miyake reached for him the moment she was dragged off to die for a crime she never should have had to commit. Time has made it… easier, to cope with, but to say that it’s erased the pain would be a lie.)

It’s terrible watching Kaito go off like this-- specifically because it’s been a while since he’s had a true fit-- even though Rantaro wasn’t alive for the part of the game when the symptoms of his disease started manifesting, and then getting worse. He wasn’t in the simulation to experience the fear of watching Kaito cough blood into his hand for the first time, nor was he there really to cry when he was loaded into that rocket ship. In a way, what Tsumugi was written to do to him was a mercy, killing him so early on into the game, that he didn’t have to go through it all a second time, not in the first person.

But he still  _ saw it,  _ from the outside, from the facility, where it was always too cold to sleep without a blanket and where for the longest time, even after Toujou and Hoshi and Shinguuji and Chabashira and Angie woke up, his only companion was the girl who he thought killed him, whether because there was nobody else or because the people who  _ had  _ awoken had little desire to talk to anybody. Rantaro has more than one memory of sitting huddled in the middle of Kaede’s bed, the girl tucked into his arms, feeling her shake from memories of her execution, fighting off nightmares of his own.

Being forced to watch the killing game really didn’t help, in that respect. And seeing Kaito like this, hacking so hard Rantaro can taste iron when he isn’t even the one coughing, always reminds him of that, always makes him think Kaito is going to lower his hands from his mouth and they’re going to be painted with magenta.

He  _ has  _ coughed up blood before, back during the worst of it, but that was simply because he was coughing too much. The disease he was given in the simulation was a fabrication. It wasn’t a real sickness. The cough that Kaito has now is a phantom cough, nothing more than a physical, tangible reminder of how they all suffered, and his blood, when it dripped down his face, was red. Rantaro can’t decide whether he’d prefer cuts to line the insides of Kaito’s wrists or not; at least then, he’d know better how to fix it. At least then there would  _ be  _ a solution, something more palatable than time.

Rantaro has never asked Kaito what his nightmares are about, mostly because he hasn’t needed to. Back in the beginning, when Kaito’s breakdowns were always littered with apologies and half-formed, incoherent protestations about how he was supposed to be  _ stronger,  _ supposed to be the hero, whatever that meant, and back when Rantaro had so much trauma layered upon trauma layered upon trauma that he had simply forgotten how to cry, that being vulnerable was even an  _ option,  _ he always told Rantaro about his nightmares from start to finish, like he had something to prove. Like if he could put it out into the world what they were about, it meant he wasn’t weak, or… or something.

And it wasn’t as though Rantaro had minded-- he’d heard more than his fair share of nightmares in the few months between his first and second game, trying so hard to fix things for his friends from  _ DRV2 _ like he hadn’t been able to the first time around-- but it always sucked, seeing Kaito tear himself apart, trying to get through an explanation he clearly didn’t want to give.

Kaito’s gotten past that now, somewhat, even if sometimes the word  _ Luminary  _ still falls from his lips and he still tells Rantaro he’s fine without even thinking about it and even if he still dodges Ouma and Saihara and Harukawa’s phone calls when he doesn’t think he could pretend to be strong, but he tells Rantaro about his nightmares still anyway. Not always in so much detail, sometimes he just screws his eyes shut and mutters,  _ the usual,  _ but that’s explanation enough, really. Kaito’s mind can be brutal (as Rantaro’s can, but it’s easier to recognise one’s own afflictions in somebody else) but he definitely has some nightmares that occur more than others.

And it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that the one that comes up more often is just, a memory, of that execution that made it so he can never think about going to space without being afraid of drilling down into the earth instead.

After a while of coughing, terrible, choked coughs that eventually peter out into raspy wheezes, and dry gagging into the pillow, Kaito slumps down, completely, and Rantaro takes the opportunity to pull him in closer, to turn him around and reach his free hand over for the water. Kaito sits himself up when directed, but Rantaro supports him, tucking an arm around his waist and letting him lean his full weight into Rantaro’s side. Rantaro really doesn’t mind. There are tears on Kaito’s face, from the coughing, most likely, but neither of them address them (or anything about the current situation) just yet, not until Kaito has accepted and drained the cap, closing his eyes and swallowing thickly.

Based on the quiet hiss that leaves Kaito when he does so, it must hurt. But he needs the water. Rantaro rubs a hand up and down his arm, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

“You with me?” Rantaro asks, quietly, the first real words he’s spoken since coming over. He doesn’t count all the things he murmured during the thick of it, mainly because he doesn’t actually  _ remember  _ what he said. There comes a point in all the repetition where the specifics don’t really matter, not one bit.

Kaito nods, and Rantaro watches his eyelashes flutter, fresh tears catching in them. “Mhm,” he hums out, and his voice sounds absolutely wrecked. Rantaro would like to stop him, to urge that they move to texting, but Kaito has always been such a vocal person, it never really helps him, communicating that way. “Sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“You didn’t, don’t worry about it,” Rantaro says, earnestly, brushing his fingers through Kaito’s hair. Parts of it are plastered to his forehead and the back of his neck with sweat, but Rantaro doesn’t heed them. It doesn’t matter. “I was reading. You have nothing to apologise for.”

“Mmm,” Kaito doesn’t otherwise acknowledge the statement. He closes his eyes back up, and Rantaro watches him brush away the tears that manage to sneak down his face. There’s a moment of silence, and Rantaro considers breaking it, but after a while, he decides against it. Kaito is probably gathering his nerves enough to explain his nightmare right now, and it’s not  _ needed,  _ not by a long shot, but Rantaro knows that it helps him, so he won’t interrupt. He’ll wait, until Kaito is ready. “I know that they… let us out, and that Danganronpa’s been over for years, but I dreamed that…” his breath hitches, and he stops, probably trying to find his voice again. Rantaro kisses him on the head, smooths his hair down. “That we ended up back there, again, and had to… do it all over.”

Kaito mumbles something else, and Rantaro doesn’t quite understand it, but the end of it sounds something like  _ had to see you die again,  _ and Rantaro hums, because that’s enough of an explanation, really. He doesn’t need anything else.

It’s such a… it’s such a real fear, too, not necessarily because it’s plausible (because  _ Team Danganronpa  _ is well and truly dead; Saihara made sure of that, with his testimony, with all the work he did even after getting out of the simulation to nail them for good) but because… because how couldn’t it be? Every moment Rantaro takes his eyes off of Kaito, there’s the fear that something could happen, and that one (or both) of them could end up back there, watching all their friends die again, not even remembering that they loved one another in the first place.

And it isn’t as though Rantaro can make himself forget all that happened in his  _ waking  _ hours. Even when he’s awake, he’s a wreck, barely managing to hold it together, thinking about sisters who he lost in a life that wasn’t real, about friends he couldn’t save, about libraries and camera flashes and shot put balls, but when he’s asleep he doesn’t have his rationality there to keep him safe. Anything can happen when he’s asleep. It isn’t as though he can just turn his mind  _ off,  _ after all, and it really is so rare that Rantaro has a happy dream.

Rantaro is usually able to bring himself down from it all again, because Kaito is here, and he’s so warm and his voice is so steady when he’s calm and he takes such good care of Rantaro, even if Rantaro doesn’t really deserve it, but the danger is always  _ there,  _ lurking, in the back of his mind… it’s hard to believe they’ll ever really be truly safe. From the memories. From  _ Danganronpa. _

So Rantaro says, “I’m sorry, Kaito. It’s scary to think about in the daytime but it’s worse to dream.” He rubs his face against the side of Kaito’s head, a little, just a light gesture of affection. “That must have been real bad.” Quieter, he adds, “It wasn’t real, though. We aren’t going back there, no matter what.” It’s as much to convince Rantaro as it is to convince Kaito, really, because often times, even  _ now,  _ Rantaro isn’t really so sure.

When Kaito replies, though, he’s smiling. “I know,” he mumbles, and he shuffles a little in Rantaro’s arms, facing him more. Rantaro feels the scratch of his stubble against his neck, and smiles slightly, endeared to the familiar sensation. “Even if it’s hard to know that when I’m asleep, the minute I was awake and coughing and I felt you coming to comfort me, I knew it was okay.” Kaito’s voice goes quieter. “Knew I was safe, because I was with you.”

“Kaito…” Rantaro looks down at his boyfriend, feels his breath hitch. He doesn’t think Kaito really understands how much that means to hear. Maybe the Rantaro from before was different, the one who signed up for Danganronpa, that is, but all Rantaro has ever wanted, from where he is now, is… just that, to make someone he loves, as he loves Kaito, feel safe.

“Don’t particularly think you’re some kinda superhero or somethin,” Kaito mumbles, waving a hand. “Just… can’t help feeling okay when you’re here.” He smiles a little, even as Rantaro watches a few more tears drip down from his eyes. Probably just in the aftermath of that nightmare. No matter  _ how  _ safe Rantaro apparently makes him feel, it must have been awful, dreaming that, and the fucking phantom cough couldn’t have helped matters much either.

“I’m glad I can do that for you,” Rantaro murmurs, squeezing Kaito a little, smiling when his boyfriend grumbles, getting more comfortable in the embrace. “How’re you feeling?”

“Throat hurts, probably need cough medicine,” Kaito admits. He cracks one of his eyes open, and even rimmed with red and puffy as it is, Rantaro finds himself admiring how lovely it is, that particular warm shade of lilac. “But can you spoon me a bit first?”

“Of course I can,” Rantaro smiles, wider than before, and Kaito smiles too (which is something special because he’s blind as a bat without his glasses on) before tugging himself out of the embrace to lie back down.

They’re only apart for a second before Rantaro has tucked himself into Kaito’s back, peppering his boyfriend’s neck with light kisses. Rantaro is glad he can make Kaito feel safe, even now, when the world is dark and it’s so hard to forget how hard they’ve worked to get here.

Kaito makes  _ him  _ feel safe after all, so it’s only fair. Rantaro presses a kiss to the back of Kaito’s head, and between the warmth from the man in his arms and from the fuzzy feelings in his chest, Rantaro ends up falling asleep before he remembers to get Kaito that cough medicine.

It’s okay. He’ll take it in the morning. There’s no danger, here. They’re just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> laughs and hands you more amamota


End file.
